FDA AND STATE AUTHORITIES WAR AGAINST NATURAL REMEDIES

A decade's-long dispute
between a highly respected physician/scientist and the State of
California ended with the elderly doctor, Bruce Halstead, on criminal
probation and stripped of his license to practice medicine.

In light of this and other recent actions taken
by state governmental authorities in cooperation with such U. S.
institutions as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the FTC
(Federal Trade Commission), the government appears to be engaged in a
concerted war against a domain of the healing arts known as
alternative medicine. This war, ostensibly for the protection of
American citizens from unscrupulous "quacks," has apparently moved
into a new phase. The FDA's pursuit of medical "public enemies" is no
longer restricted primarily to non-MD practitioners not trained at
established medical schools--those the general public largely
considers the unorthodox fringe of the medical world. These federal
agencies are now engaging the force of the government's legal
machinery in the prosecution of physicians practicing "conventional
medicine"--those who have dared to recognize and even incorporate
into their practices the efficacy of holistic natural remedies.

Dr. Halstead is a graduate of Loma Linda
University, a medical school which, to those in the field of the
human physiological sciences, ranks as one of the more prestigious
schools of medicine and scientific research in the world.

The 77-year-old physician is currently on
probation under the State of California, Los Angeles County, for his
activities involving the prescribing of alternative medication,
specifically for his cancer patients. Dr. Halstead has been suspended
from any form of medical practice. "In fact," he told The WINDS, "I
can't even talk to a patient about nutrition."

When his home and clinic in San Bernardino
County were raided by the Los Angeles District Attorney, "I
challenged their legal jurisdiction," Halstead informed The WINDS,
"since I had never lived or worked in Los Angeles County, but that
did not matter. I was a legal novice and had not yet learned that
jurisdiction and venue were merely legal fantasies which have no
meaning in actual fact for the alternative health physician." (Nor,
apparently, does the constitutional doctrine of habeas corpus).

Dr. Halstead was charged with twenty-eight
counts of conspiracy, grand theft and violations of the Health and
Safety Code, along with twenty felony and misdemeanor counts.

"The prosecutor wanted me to go to prison for
eight years," he told The WINDS, "but the court ultimately reduced
the sentence to 32 months. I was offered, on at least ten different
occasions, the 'opportunity' of plea bargaining for a crime which I
did not commit," Halstead explained. "My reply was 'not until hell
freezes over.'"

The assault upon alternative medicine "is not
just against me," he said. "They're after everybody and everything"
connected with the field.

THE QUALIFICATIONS

Dr. Halstead, acclaimed as a genius even among
his peers, has authored hundreds of books and research publications.
Among them are benchmark works such as Poisonous and Venomous
Marine Animals of the World which the U.S. Navy considers of
such importance as to fund a project to put the entire three-volume
tome on CD-ROM.

The WINDS obtained a copy of Dr. Halstead's
Curriculum Vitae, the academician's equivalent of a
resume´. The following qualifications belong to a man whom the
government deems dangerous to his patients, incompetent to practice
medicine and academically inadequate to determine what is harmful or
beneficial to human physiology:

Eleven years teaching on the medical faculty of Loma Linda
University.

Engaged in marine scientific research with the Jacques
Cousteau Society, traveling extensively with the Cousteaus for
eighteen years.

Additionally, Dr. Halstead has been deeply involved in the study
of the use of oriental herbal therapy on immune deficiency disorders.

If the foregoing portrayal of a
physician/scientist depicts a man who is unqualified to recommend
treatment to his patients, to whom would the government have its
citizens resort?--to those whose abysmal record of success appears to
condemn far more patients to death than life. With the aforementioned
credentials ascribed to him, one could ask how any law enforcement
agency, tasked with the medical oversight and welfare of its
citizens, could be so zealous as to prosecute one such as Dr.
Halstead and class him with the "snake oil" peddlers they sometimes
encounter.

In 1959 Dr. Halstead founded the World Life
Research Institute in Grand Terrace, California. It was his work with
this organization that, years later, ran him afoul of the Food and
Drug Administration when he attempted to incorporate his massive
knowledge and experience into the treatment of cancer.

THE MOTIVE SURFACES

Perhaps something else Dr. Halstead revealed to
The WINDS has played a part in the FDA's zeal to relegate him to the
medical "scrap heap". "We have been monitoring the illicit regulatory
activities of the FDA and the cancer establishment, " Halstead
claims, "and are in constant contact with a network of organizations
and attorneys dealing with their illegal health activities in this
country which are steadily driving up our national health costs."

Is it not interesting how money keeps
introducing itself into the mix? Halstead concurs making the ominous
assertion that, "Cancer is the sacred cow of the medical industry.
More people make money by treating cancer than there are victims
dying from the disease."

After a 25-year effort into medical/biological
research, "I was shocked," Dr. Halstead exclaimed, "to find upon my
Rip Van Winkle return to clinical medicine that dangerous toxic
drugs, all FDA approved, had proliferated to a frightening
extent--over 1.54 billion prescriptions written in the U.S. per year.

"I found," Halstead continues, "that many of
these drugs destroy your immune system and are carcinogenic. New and
awesome medical technologies were also being spawned, mind-blowing in
both their diagnostic capability and staggering costs to the
consumer.

"However, in evaluating this new drug and
health technology, I did not find a commensurate improvement in
either morbidity or mortality statistics in chronic degenerative
afflictions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. Costs had
increased, but not the overall health index. We had dropped to about
23[rd] position among the nations of the world in health care."

This data, presented by an eminent
physician/scientist, raises the logical question as to whether this
may be a reasonable explanation as to why the strike by New York
doctors several years ago resulted in a decline in the city's
overall death rate. "At this point in time," Halstead concludes, "I
have the profound conviction that America is on a disaster course in
health care both economically and therapeutically....A dangerous
therapeutic mind set exists in this country that it is better to die
in an orthodox fashion than to survive in an unorthodox manner."

THE RAID

In reference to his implication that the
government would rather allow an individual to die than to condone
the application of "unorthodox" treatment, Dr. Halstead relates the
following event he presented in his court trial:

"During my final oral argument I recounted the
incident when defendant Alfred Dix and his wife had their home raided
by the Los Angeles District Attorney. Mr. Dix had been using and
selling the herbal drink." [The doctor is here speaking of a specific
compound of Japanese herbs (ADS) from which a tea is made that many
clinical trials, according to Halstead, have proven very effective in
the treatment of cancer].

"Mrs. Dix had been diagnosed as having terminal abdominal cancer.
She had had surgery, nine different types of chemotherapy, and over
ninety different treatments of radiation, all of which had failed.
Her doctors told her that she had only 30 to 45 days to live. She was
bedridden, had given up hope, and was preparing to die. She and her
husband had even contacted a mortician to make funeral arrangements.

"Mr. Dix then came in contact with ADS [the herbal compound].
After taking ADS for about ten days, Mrs. Dix began to feel better,
started doing housework, shopping, traveling, and started
entertaining again. I met Mr. and Mrs. Dix one day in the lobby of a
hotel in Pasadena. She was walking, mentally alert, happy and
laughing, and stated emphatically that she was feeling great. No
aches or pains - thanks to ADS.

"At the time of the raid at the Dix home, the D.A. confiscated all
of her ADS. Her husband begged and tearfully pleaded with the D.A. to
release enough of the ADS for his wife's use. The D.A. refused to
release any of the tea to her.

"The next time I saw Mrs. Dix was in the courtroom. She looked
pale, in a weakened condition, unable to walk, crestfallen and
anguished. A few days later she died - a broken woman, a victim of
the land of the free and the home of the brave.

"What has happened to our national ideal of life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness? Why has the prosecution denied Mrs. Dix the
right to retain a cup of harmless adaptogenic tea which she purchased
for her own cancerous condition? What has happened to her civil
liberties?

"I could not think of a single tyrannical country in which this
scenario could have taken place."

Perhaps, one might reason, Dr. Bruce Halstead's
case and claims are somewhat of an isolated example of government
intervention into the medical lives of Americans.

BURZYNSKI TOUCHES SACRED COW

Case-in-point #2: Stanislaw Burzynski, MD,
PhD., who, in 1970, fled the repressive Communist regime of his
native Poland and came to the "land of the free and the home of the
brave" where he soon became a researcher at Baylor College of
Medicine in Houston.

"During the next several years," as reported by
radio commentator and columnist Paul Weyrich, "he authored and
co-authored sixteen papers, mostly on cancer research. He became a
member in good standing of both the AMA and the American Association
for Cancer Research. It was during this period that he developed a
non-toxic, experimental therapy which resulted in a
synthetically-produced protein sequence which reprogrammed and
reverted the activity of cancer cells.

"Over the past eighteen years," Weyrich
continued in his commentary entitled, "Time to Review the FDA", "2500
people have been treated by Dr. Burzynski. Not a single one of them
became ill from the treatment. But more importantly, every single
patient showed anti-tumor activity and most of these patients are in
a state of complete remission. That should be enough to earn Dr.
Burzynski a place alongside such famous medical pioneers as Jonas
Salk. But, unfortunately for Dr. Burzynski, for the second time in
his life, he has encountered the oppressive hand of the all-powerful
state. Thinking that he had come to America to escape the repressions
of communism, the good doctor has been, for the past twelve years,
fighting the Food and Drug Administration."

Dr. Burzynski has been another of those
scientists to have touched the medical "sacred cow" of cancer
research and been unfortunate enough, it seems, to have discovered an
effective treatment for the disease.

Another logical question arises from the
confusingly inconsistent application of "human rights" by this
nation's government. The WINDS has been discussing the fate of two
highly respected physician/scientists, well established in not only
the medical community but in the halls of scientific research. Their
"crimes" were sharing with fellow human beings--those who happened to
also be patients, suffering with maladies that are, for the most
part, still a mystery to conventional medical science-- remedies for
which there have been ample empirical and reproducible scientific
evidence of effectiveness. Why were these men's actions deemed
criminal by federal authorities? According to standard "government
think", it is largely because the medical community does not, or will
not, recognize the validity of most natural remedies. They are not
sufficiently profit-intensive thereby, robbing the large,
multi-national pharmaceutical companies of immense profits. Many very
effective medications can be found growing as "weeds" in the forest,
urban fields or even in one's own back yard where there is no law
(yet) against harvesting and using them.

A support organization established in Burzynski's
name has erected a web
site, the contents of which appears to be a carefully recorded
chronology of events describing the interaction between Dr. Burzynski
and the Food and Drug Administration. That chronology includes quoted
statements by FDA officials that render a chilling perspective on that
powerful organization's support of large industrial pharmaceutical
companies and the federal government's attitude of consigning the
individual to relative insignificance.

Former FDA Bureau of Drugs Director, Richard
Crout, is quoted as stating that any organization, other than large
research establishments who desire the Administration's approval to
conduct clinical trials, should be subject to "harsh
regulations....Sometimes we say it is proper to hinder research."

For those who question that power and money are
the controlling influences in the drug industry, Dr. Crout is also
quoted as saying, "I never have and never will approve a drug to an
individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited
resources."

NOW IT BECOMES KNOWN

Occasionally, there appears a light within the
federal juggernaut emanating from one that seems to understand this
nation's tenth amendment to the constitution. One such light resides
in a statement from FDA official, William Nychis who is quoted by
Burzynski as informing Herbert Koch, MD, of the Harris County Medical
Society that, "a physician who manufactures and uses a drug within
his own practice of medicine...is not subject to [FDA regulations]
since the practice of medicine is properly regulated by state or
local authorities."

Apparently the FDA was not enlightened by
Nychis' statement. In a response to a U.S. District Court Judge's
tacit approval of Dr. Burzynski's use of his anti-cancer drug within
Texas state boundaries, the FDA allegedly issued the statement that
if the federal judge does not comply with its demands, the
"...government would then be obliged to pursue other less efficient
remedies, such as actions for seizure and condemnation of the drugs
or criminal prosecution of individuals...."

This they did when Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, MD,
PhD, was subjected to four Grand Jury investigations in which one
U.S. Assistant Attorney was disciplined for prosecutorial misconduct
and "FDA Commissioner David Kessler face[d] harsh questioning by
Congressman Joe Barton's Investigations Subcommittee about FDA's
abuse of Grand Juries, and about how he can justify four Grand Juries
with no indictment."

A fifth Grand Jury attempt by the government to
indict Burzynski, however, was successful on the grounds that he
"released his out-of-state patients to return home with a supply of
antineoplastons [the drug at issue]. The charges are based upon
'interstate commerce of a new drug.'"

FDA GOES FOR THE THROAT

In an article published in Reason
Magazine, former FDA Chief Counsel, Peter Barton Hutt, makes a
startling claim: "If you beat the FDA in court," Hutt asserts, "you
have an angry FDA that is willing to slit your throat. When the FDA
loses a case, it has a mind like an elephant. It's just something
you've got to understand about the FDA. Once the agency makes a
collective decision, trying to make it let go is almost impossible.
These are FDA crusades -- in a real sense they are vendettas."

On May 27, as reported by the Houston
Chronicle, Dr. Burzynski "who once faced 75 federal charges
stemming from the interstate shipment of his experimental cancer
treatment drug was acquitted...of the lone remaining count. "The
verdict ended, without a single conviction, a 14-year effort by
federal authorities to make a criminal case against the Polish-born
physician."

The Chronicle went on to report that,

"Patients and their families who packed the courtroom
in a show of support wept and shouted when the verdict was read after
about three hours of jury deliberation.

"Burzynski, too, was elated.

"It's the end of 14 years of war. It's the beginning of the end of
the war on cancer," he said.

"He predicted that the verdict would put his class of experimental
drugs, known as antineoplastons, on the fast track for approval by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"Burzynski now treats about 300 patients from all over the
country, most of whom have brain cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
under an FDA program for investigational new drugs."

"I found the government's behavior offensive," one of the jurors,
a Houston attorney, is quoted as saying. "A lot of people felt it
was. This was a Big Brother issue." (ibid.)

Among the growing list of those who are finding
the "government's behavior offensive are a few examples related to
The WINDS by the publisher of The Echo, a Washington
State-based watchdog publication that keeps track of such abuses.

Glen Warner, MD, helped draft a Washington state law
prohibiting any medical oversight authority from suspending or
revoking the license of a physician for practicing and prescribing
alternative or holistic medicine. In a continuing illustration
that the government respects no laws limiting its own authority,
shortly after the aforementioned law went into effect, state
medical authorities revoked Dr. Warner's medical license for his
involvement in alternative medicine.

Dr. Jonathan Wright, Kent, Wa. Federal authorities seized over
$100,000 worth of vitamins. He was raided for use of injectable
B-12. The Justice Department reviewed the case and threw it out.

WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING?

Why this growing intervention from federal
authorities in instances where the public's safety and well-being are
clearly not an issue; instances where conventional medicine has
demonstrated an impotence in dealing with the maladies being
addressed? A series of rhetorical questions could be posed whose
answers would seem ridiculously obvious.

Does money have anything to do with the
government's handling of the aforementioned instances? Does the fact
that an inordinate number of FDA officials, according to
congressional inquiries, accept executive positions with large
pharmaceutical companies upon retirement play any role in creating an
atmosphere where such super-lucrative business ventures, as cancer
research, will be endlessly perpetuated? Recall Dr. Bruce Halstead's
statement, "Cancer is the sacred cow of the medical industry. More
people make money by treating cancer than there are victims dying
from the disease."

If, as national death statistics indicate,
500,000 people per year die of the disease, the "cancer economy" of
this nation is staggering in both the number of individuals employed
and the quantity of capital outlay for research and pharmaceuticals.
Could there be another even more insidious agenda behind this
obstruction by the government of potentially massive lifesaving
research?

According to
the
document that is the expression of the spirit guiding the New
World Order since its inception, the answer is clear, "The upper
class, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested
in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy and strong. We are
interested in just the opposite--in the diminishment, the killing out
of the nations. Our power is in the chronic...physical and mental
weakness of the worker. What that results in is his being made the
slave of our will, and he will not find in the authorities of his own
society either the strength or energy to oppose us... for an excited
patient [one that is under stress] loses all power of judgment and
easily yields to suggestion,"-- even the suggestion, it would seem,
to die rather than reject the fallacious authority of those invoking
his servitude to mindless administrative regulations.

If one were to describe, without including the
details of the situation, the forgoing scenario of a government
refusing to allow a person control over their own body, the narrative
would most likely be mistaken for an anti-abortion or "pro-life"
argument. The concept of "pro-choice" is, after all, a term
applicable only when it applies to the destruction of children while
still residing in their mother's body. The idea that the abstraction
might apply to one attempting to save his or her own life or that of
a loved one, is anathema to the collective consciousness of "the land
of the free and the home of the brave."

Written 9/15/97

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